David Brooks' Special Suburbanites

In his New York Timescolumn, David Brooks cheers the rise of suburban independent voters in this week's midterms elections, crediting them with Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia. Brooks has made a career out of singing thepraises of suburban Americans,all the while suggestingthat they are somewhat ignored. While liberals and conservatives have their own media machines and think tanks, Brooks writes:

Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don't have any of this. They don't have institutional affiliations. They don't look to certain activist lobbies for guidance. There aren't many commentators who come from an independent perspective.

If he's talking about centrists, it doesn't make muchsense; actually, middle-of-the-road think tanks tend to dominate the media discussion. (Perhaps Brooks has heard of Brookings?) But he tries to explain their significance this way:

The first thing to say is that this recession has hit the new suburbs hardest, exactly where independents are likely to live. According to a survey by the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, 76 percent of suburbanites say they or someone they know have lost a job in the past year.

While that does sound suspiciously like a think tank catering to, well, those think tank-less independents, are those numbers very alarming? An Ipsos/Reuters survey from June found that 80 percent of Americans knew someone who lost a job. A July Marist poll on New York state residentsfound that "82 percent of city voters and 79 percent of those in the suburbs" knew someone who'd lost a job in the past six months.Maybe Brooks' suburbs aren't so special after all.

Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

In theory, an independent does not have to be a "centrist." He just has to dislike both parties. That could put him anywhere on the spectrum, but the people who are fed up with the two-business-party system tend to be from the left-wing.

That said, American independents do not dislike both parties. Rather, they sympathize with each party on different issues. It's a misnomer really, because they are treated as if they are unbiased when, in fact, their bias ranges from issue to issue like everyone else.

Murkin "independents" mainly are voters who are too lazy to follow the relevant political events, and who mainly "agree" with the last polemicist who gets their attention. They're not thinkers, not critical, not reflective: they're weal-minded: FOLLOWERS and drones…

True, only 20% apparently identify as Pukes (significantly fewer than those–mebbe 35%–who identify as Dims). But that doesn't mean they won't VOTE Puke, if that has been their pattern in the past–and since 1980, it has been.

A significant number were swayed by the "Obama" wave in 2008. They'll be swayed by the backlash of the Right, next time… Obama is already 'damaged goods.'